Five men down, noted Steve from the side of the truck. Three more to go.
Ollie and the rest of the unit were putting down a steady barrage of fire, the bullets flying a foot over Maksim’s head and slicing into the enemy positions. One more man had fallen, but the remaining two soldiers had thrown themselves behind the limousine, protecting themselves from the murderous assault. They were starting to return shots, spitting bullets from their AK-47s into the strange, dark figure emerging slowly from the smoke and flame all around them.
‘Don’t waste the ammo,’ yelled Ollie. ‘We can’t hit them from here.’
Behind then, Wallace and Park had jumped from the two Land Rovers following the convoy. The two most experienced soldiers in the field, they had already guessed this was a dummy assault, and that behind the exploding oil drums there was no army ready to advance. They were shouting wildly, trying to get the soldiers who’d run off to deal with the mock assault to come back and round up the prisoners.
‘Pin those buggers down,’ yelled David.
Dan immediately ran to the back of the truck and, alongside David, started putting round after round into Wallace’s position. The two men dived behind the immobilised Land Rover, dragging Archie with them.
There wasn’t much chance of hitting them, realised David. Not unless they could lay their hands on some grenades or an RPG. But so long as they could stop them co-ordinating a fight back, it was worth the ammo they were using. Just until we can get the hell out of here, David told himself.
‘How the fuck is he going to make it?’ yelled Steve, pointing towards Maksim.
‘He needs help,’ confirmed Ollie.
‘Sod it,’ muttered Steve. The lunatic Russian was risking all of their lives. But that didn’t mean they could leave him to walk straight into a hail of bullets. One man’s already died on this mission, Steve thought. I’m not losing another one.
Jumping down from the truck, he started to run towards the limousine. Seems a shame to blow the bastard to hell, reflected Steve as he glanced briefly at the Lexus LS460L. Waste of a lovely motor.
Maksim had already thrown himself to the ground.
He’d rattled off half a dozen rounds, straight underneath the Lexus, slicing through the boots of the soldiers crouching on the other side. The bullets crashed into the mass of delicate bones threading through the ankle into the foot. Both men screamed in pain. At the same time, Steve kept running, diving along the edge of the car, pointing his Uzi towards the wounded men. He fired straight for their heads, the stream of bullets knocking them leftwards, then rightwards, then punching the life out of them.
Over by the burning oil drums, the soldiers had finally realised there that this was no major attack, merely an ambush, and were advancing back towards the centre of the avenue. There were at least fifty of them, and although they still looked confused and disorganised, in the next few seconds Steve knew they would have steadied themselves into a formidable fighting force.
One civilian was running towards Steve, shouting. Steve simply raised the Uzi and thumped a bullet straight into the man’s chest. ‘Get back,’ he shouted. ‘Put some fire into those men,’ he then yelled at Ollie, pointing to the advancing troop of soldiers.
Ollie reacted instantly. While Ganju kept his AK-47 trained on Wallace and Park, keeping them pinned down, Dan and David rushed to Ollie’s side of the truck and the three men laid down a volley of fire into the incoming soldiers.
They picked off one man. Enough to briefly halt their advance.
But they were running dangerously low on bullets. Of the thirty-rounds in the AK-47s they had grabbed from the dead soldiers, they each had less than ten rounds left. Dan had riffled through the uniforms of the corpses, and each man was carrying one spare mag, but that still gave them only forty rounds per man. ‘Bloody move it!’ he shouted towards Steve. ‘We haven’t the ammo to hold them.’
Maksim by now had stood up, and was grabbing hold of the back door to the Lexus. ‘Right, let’s finish this bastard,’ he growled.
The Lexus was fitted with black tinted windows, but you could still see through it. In the back seat, Kapembwa was sitting still, his expression calm, his eyes steely and resolved, as if he expected his troops to come and rescue him within the next few minutes. At his side was a man dressed in a dark suit who looked like a security official and, up front, a driver.
‘Get ready to die,’ Maksim told them. Then, lifting the AK-47 to his shoulder, he pumped one, two, then three bullets straight into the window.
Sodding Spetsnaz, sighed Steve. All muscle and munitions and no subtlety.
The windows of the Lexus were constructed of bullet-resistant glass, manufactured to the highest standards. Made from a polycarbonate thermoplastic, the glass was three inches thick, and simply flattened the bullet on impact, deflecting it harmlessly away.